Chapter 8 – Ashes of a Dead God

Chapter 8 – Ashes of a Dead God

“I will now teach you the basics of enchanting.” Liria told Seris, in her best approximation of Aethon’s dignified voice.

The child stood at attention in the clearing, morning light falling warm across his shoulders, hanging on her every word with a solemn and serious expression. Liria felt the corners of her lips twitch.

So cute.

She resisted the urge to pinch his cheek. She was in her “serious professor” mode and had an image to maintain.

“Enchanting is no different from writing. The basis for both is communication,” Liria began the lecture. “If writing is the art of communicating with other humans through letters and ink, then enchanting is communicating with the world through sigils and mana.”

Liria took out Kaerthis’ medallion and held it out for Seris to take. The morning light caught the metalwork as it passed between them, throwing tiny constellations across the backs of her hands.

“I will teach you the language of sigils later. For now, you only need to focus on the enchanting process itself. Engraved on that medallion is a prewritten thesis to the world. It is currently inert. What you need to do is make the sigils visible to the world by imbuing them with mana.” She looked at him encouragingly. “Go ahead and give it a try.”

For a long moment he fiddled with the medallion, turning it over in his small hands, brow furrowed in concentration. Then he looked back at her with an embarrassed expression.

“Big sister, how do I imbue the sigils with mana?”

Liria froze, desperately fighting back a blush. How could she have made such an amateur mistake?

In her defense, had Seris been a normal child, Liria would have just directly implanted whatever knowledge Seris needed in his mind and called it a day. That was what she had done all her life. Teaching the manual way was a fresh experience, and she had underestimated how much she relied on the shortcut.

Liria searched her mind for the right words.

“Picture yourself holding a pen made of your intent, and the green fire that sleeps inside you is its ink,” she calmly instructed him, acting as if she had been waiting for his question all long. “Now trace the sequence of sigils in an unbroken line, from the first sigil to the last. Once the beginning connects with the end, and your mana forms a closed circuit, then the enchanting process is complete. Can you do this Seris?”

A line of green fire was already inching its way through the sigils etched on the medallion. Her question had been unnecessary. Liria smiled fondly. As expected of Seris. Such a talented child. Of course, this gets harder the closer the circuit is to completion, and a momentary slip of focus would mean starting over, but Liria had faith that Seris would succeed.

This medallion was her answer to the problem of their opposing attributes. Since she and her siblings could not use their magic on Seris without causing him pain, he would use his own instead. Once he completed the enchanting process, the medallion would constantly draw half of his mana and use it to power an isolation seal on the other half, creating a perpetually self-sustaining loop.

An imperfect solution, but it would let him live a normal life for the first time. She found herself looking forward to the day she could bring him back to civilization.

Contrary to Liria’s expectations, Seris made no further progress despite his inspired start.

Initially, she had expected him to get it right on his first attempt, but after concentrating for an hour, his focus slipped with only two more sigils to go. Despite her reassurances that he did great for a first timer, Seris had shed tears of frustration while desperately apologizing. When she tried to comfort him, he had shied away from her touch for the very first time.

His subsequent attempts fared no better.

Seris tried again. And again. And again, his small hands white-knuckled around the medallion, his brow furrowed so hard it looked like it hurt. He threw himself into the work with the kind of obsessive focus that left no room for rest, pausing only briefly for lunch and dinner. His technical competence was genuinely impressive for a novice, but something always went wrong at the critical moment. His concentration would slip, or his mana would surge beyond his control just as the circuit was about to close. These were failures Liria had no way to prevent or fix for him, and standing by helplessly wore on her far more than she had expected.

Dinner was a quiet affair. Seris ate mechanically, his eyes on his bowl, and when Liria asked him gently if something was wrong, he only shook his head without looking up.

It was now late at night. Liria walked through the dark forest, her mind unsettled. Seris slept in her arms, crying and apologizing in his sleep. He had kept his distance from her throughout the day, and Liria could only approach him after he had fallen asleep from exhaustion.

Confusingly enough, the moment she picked him up, he had immediately snuggled into her embrace with a mumbled “I love you.”

His touch burned.

Liria had hoped to hug him without needing to suppress pain by the day’s end, but life never went as planned. Instead, she was only left with a deep sense of unease.

He had looked so desperate and scared each time he failed. The fear never went away, no matter how hard she tried to reassure him. Liria hadn’t thought much of his failures at first. Seris may be brilliant, but he was still a child. Being a little lacking in focus and discipline was only to be expected.

By evening time though, she was beginning to feel that the situation was abnormal. The fear was too constant, too deep to be the simple fear of disappointing her.

Could there be more to his failures? Seris was a child who could become the Lich King. Even if he was truly innocent, the fact that he carried within him the main fragment of the dead god did not change. Liria must always assume the worst.

“I’m sorry big sister,” Seris mumbled. “I’ll get better. I promise. Please don’t hate me.”

The contrast from his cheerful appearance this morning was heartbreaking.

What happened to you, Seris? Why won’t you talk to me?

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Seris,” she reassured him. “You’re doing great, and I would never hate you.”

He stirred fitfully in her arms before falling back into a deep sleep.

Stolen story; please report.

Liria walked on, searching the forest until she found a towering oak near the edge of the wood, ancient and vast enough that its crown disappeared into the dark above. She stood at its roots and pressed a palm against the rough bark. Her breathing slowed until it matched something older and less urgent than a heartbeat.

Help me.

Its drowsy and lumbering consciousness welcomed her in. As they became one, she channeled mana through the oak’s vast form, drawing on a deep and patient reservoir that her own frail vessel could not have managed alone. The light of a teleportation spell wrapped around her, and the Silverwoods gave way to the blasted gray expanse of the Ashen Wastes.

The air here was different, dry and faintly sulphurous, with a coldness beneath it that had nothing to do with temperature. Under her feet, the earth was pale and cracked, veined with the dim green luminescence of residual necromantic taint. No birds. No insects. The silence was the particular silence of a place where nothing lived by choice.

A hundred years ago, this was where the corpse of the dead god first fell, turning a prosperous and fertile realm into a barren wasteland. This was where the undead plague had first risen, and where the first necromancers had built their fortresses before being purged by paladins of the Church of Light. If the power within Seris possessed its own consciousness, then this was its chance to cause havoc.

Reveal yourself.

As if responding to her unspoken challenge, green fire blazed from the sleeping child.